Stripped to the Bone
by Two Brit Twits
Summary: There was an unexpected occurrence at work. Frank/Riff Raff.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Stripped to the Bone

Authors: The Two Brit Twits

Fandom: Rocky Horror

Rating: PG-13

Characters/Pairings: Frank/Riff Raff

Summary: There was an unexpected occurrence at work.

Chapter One

The working day did not have an auspicious beginning for either master or servant.

For Riff Raff's part, there was nothing for him to do until receiving orders from Frank. He was meant to be painting the new sonic transducer that he'd recently built and installed, but the first coat had yet to finish drying and there really wasn't much else to do. Yanking a rag out of his sleeve, he began to idly polish the statues in a bid to avoid accusations of shirking should his master make an appearance.

The rattling of the lift announced Frank's imminent arrival. Shoving the lift door aside when it finally juddered to a stop, he marched out, the vicious clicking of his heels echoing throughout the lab.

Riff Raff's shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly, but he gave no other acknowledgement of Frank's presence, having no desire to draw attention to himself when all his prior interactions with the Master had ranged from the neutral to the decidedly unpleasant. Focusing on the task at hand, he began to polish the statue's left shin until it shone. Frank walked past his servant, offering no more recognition than that he was given, going instead to scrawl out some of his theorising on the tiles of the wall.

Silence stretched out. Being ignored, however, was not a state Frank ever intended to spend a great deal of time in, and he turned to watch the movements of his handyman. "I doubt it will be any cleaner for _your _interference," he commented, observing the state of the rag.

"Very well, Master," Riff Raff replied and straightened up into his usual slightly stooping posture. "Was there anything else you... required?"

"The transducer. You haven't finished, I presume? Do so." Frank strongly believed that if servants became accustomed to a light workload then they would forget their place. As he surveyed the lab for potential chores, he noticed his scribblings on the wall from one of his earlier experiments. Gesturing towards them, he continued. "And these plans. I expect you to familiarise yourself with them immediately." Unlike his smirking factotum, he was quite unaware that a) the paint was still wet and b) his theories had already been covered by a research group on one of Transsexual's colony planets two months ago.

This lack of perspicacity is unfortunate in any leader, but doubly so in one with an underling of Riff Raff's paranoid intelligence. Nevertheless, everyone is born with some sort of survival instinct, and Frank's sent a particularly icy shiver down his spine. He stepped back as Riff Raff trundled over at his usual (and surely deliberately) maddening pace, coerced by some unconscious force into observing the handyman as he contorted until eye level with the writing.

"And the transducer," he snapped, becoming increasingly aggravated as his servant explained patronisingly that he "was still waiting for the undercoat to dry," before asking, almost with amusement, whether that would be all.

"No, that will _not_ be all!"

Frank would need to move on to other projects come sunset, but until then he was determined to make sure that his handyman actually worked for once. "You may not leave until the transducer is completed," he announced, before returning to scrawling on the wall, though the decidedly unpleasant burning around his ears that occurred whenever he'd felt the weight of Riff Raff's stare made his writing frightfully erratic.

"Sir... there is very little that I can do until the.... current coat of paint dries," Riff Raff noted, his voice a little more deferential to avoid further outrage. He paused, biting his lip in uncertainty. "Might I not be more... useful elsewhere?" Normally he would deem such a question imprudent, but the Master did seem (much to his servant's barely-hidden amusement) unusually distracted today.

Frank took one look at Riff Raff gnawing his lip before he snapped back to the jumble of words on the wall, flush rising. "Fine," he said sharply, not wanting to concede anything to Riff Raff, but nevertheless suddenly eager to get him out of his presence. "Go and see to the differential mass analyzer in the workroom." He could, after all, keep an eye on his progress via the monitors.

"As you wish, Master." Riff Raff hopped down from the stool and exited, smirking, via the lift. He stopped briefly on his way down to the workroom (his sister could be most distracting) but reached the dank little backroom soon enough. Tools and bits of rag were spread over most of the work surfaces, though a few had been kept meticulously clear and clean for the more delicate instruments.

Riff Raff adjusted the lamp and groaned. The DMA was a particularly annoying repair job - over a metre long and with several layers of hex bolts to get through before he could even begin to lift off the outer casing. Slowly, he set to work.

The upper casing was off and clear in barely half an hour. Then came the more difficult part: lifting off the metre long and very heavy outer sheath without touching the delicate inner electrode. Slowly... slowly... muscles straining, Riff Raff began to raise the metal cylinder up, inch by painful inch.

Frank didn't care to look away from the writing on the wall until the clattering of the lift faded away, heaving a sigh of relief as it did so, his breath having been held for what seemed like an age. This was...unfortunate, that he was left in such a state by the insolence of his servant, and that no measure of masterly exertions seemed to be any use when it came to correcting his unruly underling. He rested his forehead against the coolness of the tiles for a moment, before turning the monitor to the workroom. At least now he could keep an eye on the fulfilment of his commands without being subjected to such impertinence. What he saw on the monitor, however, he thought – for a moment – must be deliberate provocation, and his hand hovered over the lever as he contemplated sending Riff Raff back to the lab and away from that instrument that very second.

Back in the dank little workroom, Riff Raff stretched his arms out, then arched his back. The outer casing lay safely on the work bench and the electrode soon joined it. He stood it upright, then examined it closely for scratches until he was satisfied that it had suffered no damage. "Must be the filter then..." he muttered to himself absentmindedly, then frowned as he heard the steady chug-chug of the cantankerous old boiler limbering itself up; someone clearly wanted a hot bath and wasn't prepared to wait the two hours until six o'clock. He removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair before unscrewing the base and removing the electrometer. It was easy to change the cartridge, but the o-rings were shot. He doubted that was the problem but it was good practice to change them anyway. Eventually he found a few of the right size buried under a pile of drek. He squirted a little vaseline onto his finger tips and began to work it into the rubber- a small amount of grease was essential for making a properly airtight seal.

From the monitor came the hysterical quaver of Frank's voice. "The floors--mop the floors! Now."

Annoyance at being interrupted battled with amusement (and not a little surprise) at Frank's tone for dominance. Eventually confusion won out. What was his Master up to?

He shrugged and gathered up a mop and bucket from the cleaning cupboard just outside the workroom door, then rolled up his sleeves, filled up the bucket from the workroom sink and got to work. He supposed the airless little den did need a bit of a scrub down, but couldn't fathom why Frank would be so concerned about a part of the castle he would probably encounter only on a viewscreen.

At least prior to this, Frank could have said that he had never, at any point, formed any sort of opinion on the particulars of anything that Riff Raff normally kept covered with his filthy clothes. This was blurring a line, and he dived out of view from the monitor, both to avoid any further spectacle and to keep his own reaction out of Riff Raff's potential sight. Perhaps Riff Raff already suspected; perhaps it was merely the efforts of an upstart underling trying to seduce him out of their own desperation. Still, there were things that just weren't _done_, and degrading oneself through panting after lackeys ranked very highly. He stood for a moment to catch his breath, before trusting himself to let Riff Raff near DMAs again – he _was_ in control of himself now, and he would prove it. "Yes, that that will do," he said, daring to edge back towards the monitor. "Return to the repairs."

"Very well, Master..." he replied, then muttered "you indecisive _moron_." He'd known Furter was... eccentric... to say the least when he'd signed up, but this was becoming ridiculous. He stowed the bucket away in a corner just in case Frank decided to change his mind _again_, then returned to the DMA. He cursed whoever it was using gallons of hot water - the room was unpleasantly muggy and his shirt was beginning to stick. He found a cloth and wiped his hands and began to return each piece to its place, a painstaking job that was accompanied by much buffing, polishing and greasing. Eventually it was time to lower the casing back on. By this time his back and arms were shaking, but he steadied them enough to get it back in place without a scratch. A couple of o-rings and a few dozen bolts later and the DMA was nearly as good as new. Now he simply had to carry the bloody heavy thing up to the lab without letting the polished metal slide through his hands and crack on the floor. Joy.

Authors' Note: A DMA is a metre-long metal pole with a rounded tip. So, Riff spent most of this chapter polishing a prime bit of scientific phallic imagery.


	2. Chapter 2

Halfway through the polishing extravaganza, Frank squeezed his eyes shut, rather than continue squinting at the blue pixilations of Riff Raff's hands as they...well, quite. It was with equal amounts of relief and squirm-inducing apprehension that he heard the lift approaching. "Transducer. Now," he snapped tersely.

Riff Raff set the DMA down gently next to the lift, tying it to one of the main supports to make sure it didn't fall over. He clearly would have much to discuss with Magenta later that evening, but for now he merely collected the paint pot as he was bid and began to apply the second coat of scarlet to the bars.

From across the lab, the only thing which kept Frank from kicking the DMA to pieces was the knowledge that he'd then be rewarded for his pains by having to watch another reconstruction of it at the long, sl--at the hands of Riff Raff. Reaching into the pocket of his surgical gown, he retrieved a lighter and gasper. He lit up, leaned back and inhaled deeply. Watching Riff Raff painting the transducer was positively wholesome, compared to the sight of his hands roving all over the pole of an inner electrode.

Riff Raff shivered, and hunched his shoulders. Frank took another drag, decidedly soothed by the apparent fit of remorse. 'Quite right, too,' he thought. Everything was quite right now, he supposed, now that Riff Raff was, for the moment, perfectly, wretchedly obedient.

He stared openly at Riff Raff, making the handyman shiver again, along with the chill of the lab. Clenching his teeth to stop them chattering, Riff Raff painstakingly daubed the last bit of paint on the brightly coloured bars. "Will. That. Be. All... Master?"

Now that Riff Raff seemed gloriously unthreatening, Frank tossed aside the notion that perhaps it would be best to send him away, along with his surgical gown. "I believe the high resolution electrospray mass spectrometer is in need of attention, he replied, gesturing to it across the lab.

On Transsexual (and indeed several other planets within the galaxy of Transylvania), factotums such as Riff Raff were obligated to join the alliance of the Senior Penates Club, where it was ruled that all members must keep a thorough record of any eccentricities their employers may have. Riff Raff consoled himself with the thought that today would take up at least two pages in his oddities journal, beating the current record by well over five lines. Grudgingly, he stumbled over to the hulking mess of wires and tubes that occasionally functioned as well as might be expected of a home-built cyclotronic mass spectrometer and examined the valves. There was nothing wrong. He ran a base level diagnostic. Nothing. How curious. This time he did a full spectrum check and again came up with nothing. What the _skrack_ was Furter up to?

Muttering to himself, he began to jot down material for the book. To the casual observer it would appear as though he were merely taking notes on the machine for future reference (a most diligent and dutiful activity). It would only be on closer inspection that one would notice that the notes weren't in common, formal or technical script. In fact, it would only be with very close inspection and an acquaintance from a certain club that one would be able to decipher the writing at all.

Frank's eyes widened on seeing the little black book. That--that _thing_ was back. Oh, he'd seen it, when he'd first hired that wretched little dlenger, and he'd been certain that a few weeks of hard labour should've long since beaten any such mysterious habits out of his handyman. But that, apparently, was quite impossible. He stormed over. "Give that here," he snarled, grabbing Riff Raff's wrist and trying to wrestle the book away. They tugged back and forth for a while, but eventually Frank wrenched a little too violently, lifting Riff Raff a little off his feet so that he tripped and rolled to the floor when the latter's grip finally gave out.

Frank nearly tore the book apart in his effort to get it open, the sudden rush of adrenaline and anger making him extremely undexterous. He flipped through the pages, eyes hardly able to settle on any of the words, when he saw that it was in some form of code. "I suppose you think you're being terribly clever," he snapped, charging towards the prone handyman, who had scuttled back until he came up short against a wall, anxious to be out of kicking range as soon as possible. "Tell--me--what--it--says," Frank ground out, struggling to collar Riff Raff.

Riff Raff tried to squirm away, but he was tired and hungry and cold and just not fast enough. Soon he was half dragged to his feet with his shirt collar pulled worryingly tight about his throat and an angry transvestite towering above. "Just... lab...b...boratory... n...notes... Master," he whined. "I n...never mastered... technical script." The grip on his collar loosened a little. "Not fluently, anyway."

"Liar," Frank hissed, letting go of Riff Raff for the second it took for the hard crack of a slap to reverberate through the lab, before pulling him back up to pin him against the wall. "That never stopped you with the transducer report. What is there for you to write about _now_?"

"Merely... ah... musings... nothing of any... importance... Master."

"And what do you have to _muse_ on? Me?"

Frank was left to fume silently for a moment whilst Riff Raff pondered as though he had a choice in the matter of answering. His hands clenched in Riff Raff's shirt as his handyman apparently deemed himself above answering the question, then dragged the smaller man forwards, only to slam him back into the tiles. Here, Frank paused for a beat, feeling the sharp rise and fall of the ribcage brushing against his knuckles.

For his part, Riff Raff had relaxed as he was released, only to nearly bite through his lip as his head cracked into the tiles. Blood pooled on his tongue, thick and hot as he looked up and sullenly shook his head.

"No? Do you--refuse--me?" Frank asked, his voice far breathier than an enraged master's ought to be. Air didn't seem to be reaching his lungs, and he was suddenly and acutely aware that they'd never been closer than this as he felt Riff Raff's gasping, shuddering breath against his neck and--his hands unclenched, hovering for a moment before wrenching Riff Raff forward into a kiss, feeling almost nauseous at himself, at the sharp tang of blood, but hardly able to stop.

Riff Raff's eyes shot open. Frank clung on, kissing harder, fingertips digging into Riff Raff's scalp. Breaking off for air, he pushed Riff Raff back into the tiles. That horrible lapse of control was all Riff Raff's fault, Frank was certain, and it mustn't happen again.

"Tell. Me. _Now_."

Riff Raff allowed himself a small smirk as he began to kiss his way delicately along the taller man's jawbone. So Furter was really that desperate to know... hmm? 'Interesting,' he thought, 'that level of paranoia could be... amusing to manipulate in future.' He continued down Frank's neck, to the hollow of his throat, then straightened up a little and replied, "I... have a better idea... Master."

It occurred to Frank, hazily, that this must be what other people felt like. Namely, most of the Earthlings he'd shagged; the wanting and the not-wanting, how the one intensified the other. Realising with a jolt that, of course, the not-wanting was always forgotten in a moment, he shoved Riff Raff's face to one side, away from him. "I think not." Yet, anyway. "Tell me."

He received a grin and a featherlight shiver as his servant ran a hand very lightly down his left side to his hip in response. Riff Raff had clearly grasped that his master was a hedonist first and foremost, not the cold blooded leader that he tried to project. Leaning back in, he set tongue and teeth to work making Frank forget all about a certain little book.


	3. Chapter 3

Frank craned his head back a little, neck arching forward. His hands hovered on Riff Raff's shoulders; he was sure that he wanted to push him away, but couldn't bring himself to do so. In stark contrast to almost every other conquest of his, he had no idea what to do.

"Why won't you tell me?" he asked, rather more desperately than he intended.

Riff Raff ignored the question in favour of slowly tugging apart Frank's corset strings. They came loose easily, and the two halves cracked apart like an obscenely glittery clam shell. Without giving Frank time to hesitate, Riff Raff's hands had worked their way inside.

Frank was thrown further off-balance by Riff Raff's silence. His grip tightened around Riff Raff's shoulders, much to his imminent regret – Riff Raff was in possession of a rather good example of the much-prized Transylvanian scapula, and from there, Frank was compelled to experimentally slip a hand under Riff Raff's shirt.

There was, he must admit, a certain thrill in any kind of breach of Transylvanian social mores (even if he'd never have chosen to distinguish himself from society in such a fashion), but this lack of self-control was far more perturbing than it was pleasant. Out of desperation to be doing _something_ of his own volition, he tilted Riff Raff's head up, he went in for another kiss, teeth lightly sinking in a few hair's breadth away from the still-bleeding cut and eliciting a gasp from his (rather surprised) servant.

"That's better," Frank decided aloud, clinging to any shred of control he could scavenge. "But," here he paused, finding Riff Raff's shirt a cumbersome thing to have his hands under and making an effort to dispose of it, "you still have--haven't--" here, the collar fell open, half-revealing the line of Riff Raff's clavicles, and Frank was distracted from train of thought, "--haven't told me about the book. Now, why's that? What could possibly shock _me_, hmm?" An amusing way to emphasise this occurred to him, and he impulsively turned Riff over.

"I wouldn't..." Riff Raff yelped as Frank abruptly spun him around. "...care to speculate, Master," he continued, voice slightly muffled from having his face pressed into the tiles. Frank's mouth suddenly closed over the back of his neck in the general vicinity of the cervical vertebrae, the usual bone of choice for Transylvanian deviants, sucking hard; his breath hitched.

"Nor would I," agreed Frank, pulling back with something resembling a sigh. "You know what they say about vertebrae-lickers." He took another long, slow swipe at Riff Raff's nape with his tongue, smugly. "So, what's there to hide?" he asked, compounding the question by tugging none-too-gently at the half-unbuttoned shirt, the rest of the fastenings clinking against the tiles as they broke off.

Riff Raff _did_ know what they said; on Transsexual, there had even been years of ongoing campaigns to get a high collared army dress uniform introduced to combat what were seen as perverts in the service. While he wasn't as conservative as all that, he was still less than thrilled to be mistaken for one of those spine-suckers himself. No, he was fine with that sort licking each other's spinal columns all they liked, had nothing against it.... he just didn't really want them mouthing his own, and was more than a little shocked by the extent of his Master's depravity. An edited version of this was definitely going in the book!

His shoulders tensed with affront, and Frank chortled low in his throat, his attention seemingly diverted from the contents of the book. "Oh? Didn't you like it at all when I did this?" he asked innocently, mouth returning to Riff Raff's cervical vertebrae and provoking a similar reaction to that of earlier. "Or," peeling off the tattered shirt and casting it aside, "would you rather I did this instead?" Here, he licked at the socially acceptable and (as he would later be forced to admit) remarkably well-defined curve of a scapula.

By now, Riff Raff was not only shirtless, but also had a moderately large area of his skin covered in Frank's saliva. He was _cold_. It was for this reason (and this reason only, as he would later strive to convince himself when safely ensconced once more in the arms of his sister), that his shudders brought him into rather closer contact with the rest of Frank's body than had previously been the case. Frank gave a low hum of appraisal, burying his nose in the crook of Riff Raff's neck for a moment without regard to the merits of vertebra or scapula as he returned the gesture, pressing up against Riff Raff with no want of keenness.

Unfortunately for Riff Raff, this was as far as his mercy extended. Frank pulled back slightly, knees bending as he lowered himself past Riff Raff's cervical vertebra, and began sucking at the downward line of his spine.

Riff Raff shuddered, his stomach was churning and he wasn't entirely certain whether it was with desire or revulsion. Either way, he wanted it to stop. The soft sensation of Frank's lips down his spine elicited a resentful moan that was stifled at birth. By the ninth thoracic vertebra, it was all too much. He tried to escape, but Frank's grip on his legs caused him to stagger and nearly fall.

"Shhhhh," Frank soothed, letting his breath fan out over Riff Raff's skin in a way he nevertheless calculated to be far from calming, and kissed at his tenth thoracic vertebra with an exaggerated lip-smacking noise. He'd never gone past the shoulders in his prior experience as a vertebrae-licker, and his head swam with his own intrepidity, his faith in himself as a creature exalted beyond any of society's rules utterly reaffirmed. It was far from unpleasant. It was, however, getting decidedly cold as he neared the tiled floor of the lab, and he had no intention of kneeling there for his foray into Riff Raff's lumbar vertebrae. Sucking at the small of his back hard enough to leave a mark more permanent than his lipstick smears, Frank straightened up, pressing himself flush against Riff Raff once more. "I think we should take this elsewhere," he announced, before dragging Riff Raff towards the lift by the arm.

Door slammed and button pushed to go down, he pinned Riff Raff (who was, at present, giving such an impression of limpness that it was as though his bones had pre-emptively fled for fear of what was next) up against the iron bars, not letting him catch breath before diving in for a kiss.


End file.
